On the railing

Someone has found a glove on the pavement, small, red, the thumb still bent the way a thumb bends,

and has not taken it, and has not left it.

It is on the railing now, pulled down over the top of a post at about the height where a person retracing their steps would be looking.

Nobody saw who did this. That is usual. The finder is always gone. Only the glove waits, fingers up, a little ridiculous, like a hand raised to answer a question.

There are a great many of these. A single shoe on a wall. A dummy tied to a fence by its own ribbon. Keys hung from a branch by their ring. A hat set on a bollard, brim carefully straightened.

None of them come with a note. A note would be unnecessary. Everyone who passes reads it anyway: someone lost this; someone else thought they might come back.

I cannot tell you how many are found. Probably not most. The finder cannot tell you either. The finder did not wait.

That is the whole of it: a kindness done in the direction of someone who may not return, by someone who will never know, set at eye height in the rain.